Part 16 (1/2)
”He didn't mean to,” I said warmly. ”You understood that?”
”Yes, I understood.”
”I am glad. I'd been waiting the chance to try to explain--to ask you to pardon him--”
”But there wasn't any need.”
”You mean because you understood--”
”No,” she interrupted gently, ”not only that. I mean because he has done it himself.”
”Asked your pardon?” I said, in complete surprise.
”Yes.”
”He's written you?” I cried.
”No. I saw him to-day,” she answered. ”This afternoon when I went for my walk, he was waiting where the paths intersect--”
Some hasty e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, I do not know what, came from me, but she lifted her hand.
”Wait,” she said quietly. ”As soon as he saw me he came straight toward me--”
”Oh, but this won't do at all,” I broke out. ”It's too bad--”
”Wait.” She leaned forward slightly, lifting her hand again. ”He called me 'Madame d'Armand,' and said he must know if he had offended me.”
”You told him--”
”I told him 'No!'” And it seemed to me that her voice, which up to this point had been low but very steady, shook upon the monosyllable. ”He walked with me a little way--perhaps It was longer--”
”Trust me that it sha'n't happen again!” I exclaimed. ”I'll see that Keredec knows of this at once. He will--”
”No, no,” she interrupted quickly, ”that is just what I want you not to do. Will you promise me?”
”I'll promise anything you ask me. But didn't he frighten you? Didn't he talk wildly? Didn't he--”
”He didn't frighten me--not as you mean. He was very quiet and--” She broke off unexpectedly, with a little pitying cry, and turned to me, lifting both hands appealingly--”And oh, doesn't he make one SORRY for him!”
That was just it. She had gone straight to the heart of his mystery: his strangeness was the strange PATHOS that invested him; the ”singularity” of ”that other monsieur” was solved for me at last.
When she had spoken she rose, advanced a step, and stood looking out over the valley again, her skirts pressing the bal.u.s.trade. One of the moments in my life when I have wished to be a figure painter came then, as she raised her arms, the sleeves, of some filmy texture, falling back from them with the gesture, and clasped her hands lightly behind her neck, the graceful angle of her chin uplifted to the full rain of moons.h.i.+ne. Little Miss Elliott, in the glamour of these same blue showerings, had borrowed gauzy weavings of the fay and the sprite, but Mrs. Harman--tall, straight, delicate to fragility, yet not to thinness--was transfigured with a deeper meaning, wearing the sadder, richer colours of the tragedy that her cruel young romance had put upon her. She might have posed as she stood against the marble railing--and especially in that gesture of lifting her arms--for a bearer of the gift at some foredestined luckless ceremony of votive offerings. So it seemed, at least, to the eyes of a moon-dazed old painter-man.
She stood in profile to me; there were some jasmine flowers at her breast; I could see them rise and fall with more than deep breathing; and I wondered what the man who had talked of her so wildly, only yesterday, would feel if he could know that already the thought of him had moved her.
”I haven't HAD my life. It's gone!” It was almost as if I heard his voice, close at hand, with all the pa.s.sion of regret and protest that rang in the words when they broke from him in the forest. And by some miraculous conjecture, within the moment I seemed not only to hear his voice but actually to see him, a figure dressed in white, far below us and small with the distance, standing out in the moonlight in the middle of the tree-bordered avenue leading to the chateau gates.
I rose and leaned over the railing. There was no doubt about the reality of the figure in white, though it was too far away to be identified with certainty; and as I rubbed my eyes for clearer sight, it turned and disappeared into the shadows of the orderly grove where I had stood, one day, to watch Louise Harman ascend the slopes of Quesnay. But I told myself, sensibly, that more than one man on the coast of Normandy might be wearing white flannels that evening, and, turning to my companion, found that she had moved some steps away from me and was gazing eastward to the sea. I concluded that she had not seen the figure.